by Lauren Dane
“Christ, Ella, when you look at my mouth like that, it’s all I can do not to snatch you up and get us both out of here and behind a locked door.” His voice was low. Intimate. Tense with desire, and she felt it to her toes.
She made a man like Cope feel that way? Just by looking at his mouth? Power unfurled in her belly, warm and pleasant. Who knew?
“I kind of like that, Andrew. I must say.” She knew she blushed, but it felt too good to hold back.
Startled, he laughed and kissed her again, keeping an arm around her waist as he broke from their embrace and they turned to talk to their friends.
“You guys are all so awesome. Thank you. Really.” It had been a few years since anyone had thrown her a party of any kind. The last one had been a subdued one when she’d been released from physical therapy. This was way better.
Elise hugged her again. “Did you think we’d let your last day go by without cake? Hello, we’re an any celebration is good enough for cake crowd, after all.”
“I figured we’d have cake tonight.”
“Um, duh. But that’s pineapple upside-down cake.” Erin shrugged and then handed Ella a giant slice of double chocolate mocha cake. “This is chocolate death. Two very different, albeit necessary, flavors when it’s a party for Ella.”
Ella had been notorious for her love of cake, and over the years, it had become their little social thing. Her way of being part of the group, even when she didn’t do much socially with them. They’d celebrate things large and small over cake and have an excuse to just hang out and enjoy each other.
She took a bite and had to close her eyes to have a private moment with her taste buds. “This is a whole lot of yum on one fork, I gotta say.”
“You like? Karen said to let her know what you thought. She was thinking of calling it the Ella.” Adrian put a second slice on his plate.
“Karen, huh? You still seeing her?” Karen was the owner of a bakery in West Seattle. Adrian had met her when they were planning Elise and Brody’s wedding, and they’d gone out here and there.
As he’d spoken, Cope had moved so that he rested behind her, her body leaning against his, his arm wrapped around her waist.
“I like her. She likes me. She’s not looking for more than dinner now and again, and I’m too busy to be looking for anything else right now.” Adrian shrugged.
“She makes a mean chocolate cake.” Elise refilled Rennie’s milk as she spoke, and Ella found herself charmed by the routine of mother and daughter.
“She totally does.” Adrian agreed quite cheerfully and went back to his.
Ella snorted a laugh and absently began to straighten things up until the café’s new manager sent her the stink eye. “Nope. Not your job anymore. Sit and eat cake. I can wipe a counter down.”
So she sat eating cake, drinking coffee and just hanging out, feeling freer than she had in a very long time.
“So I have a question.”
Ella looked back to Cope and wanted to sigh wistfully at how pretty he was. “What’s that?”
“Clearly you’re Irish. If the red hair and freckles hadn’t been a clue, you having a brother named Mick would do it. But Tipton?”
She laughed and turned up her Irish. “Ah, ’tis a complicated tale, that. Mick’s given name is Michael, but everyone calls him Mick. For my uncle on my dad’s side and my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. His father came from Ireland. He was a laborer when he arrived and eventually settled in New York. Then my grandfather was out here when he was in the navy, and he came back after the war and got a job at Boeing. His daughter, my mom, Moira, met James Tipton while they were juniors in high school. James comes from a family where his grandmother came from Ireland to work at her uncle’s clothing shop in Rhode Island. Now, here’s the great shame.” Ella shook her head mock-sadly. “The man who won the lovely Rose Byrne’s heart and who became James’s grandfather was himself an immigrant from England. William Tipton. We forgive him, though, because he let his children be raised up as they should be: Irish and Catholic.”
Cope studied her a moment before deciding it was all right to laugh. “I can’t believe I never heard that story before.”
“My grandmother used to say that my grandfather was just as Irish as his children and wife were. My family sort of takes their Irish seriously, but not so much it’s not a laugh.”
“All right then. Now I know what not to bring up when I see them next.”
“Just keep an eye on the nearest exit. They do like to talk about it. A lot. You should see holidays when we’re all together, generations of us. It’s loads of gingers with freckles. We do have some goth ones in the generation just younger than mine. Take a moment to imagine Hot Topic black hair dye on someone with my complexion.”
Cope choked on his cake, and she patted his back. “I can’t believe you just called yourself a ginger. I mean, you totally are.”
“I wasn’t aware it was a secret.”
He looked up, his mirth gone, the intensity back again. “Some people get offended by the term. God, do I love red hair.”
Oh, the stuff he said! She took a deep breath, simply enjoying the back-and-forth with him. “Well, it’s a good thing for me, huh?”
“I plan to make it so, yes.”
“Whooo. You’re really good with all this. I feel like a total amateur by comparison.”
He kissed her fingertips. “You do just fine.”
Before she could make an idiot out of herself, Rennie bounded over and pulled up a chair. “I have a school fund-raiser coming up. Can I put you down for a box of these fine chocolate treats?” She thrust a paper at them.
“I most definitely would. How about I take five boxes? That way I can give some to my mom. She likes fine chocolate treats too.” Cope pulled money from his wallet as Rennie flirted with him. The little girl was as bold as Erin but graceful like her mother.
“I’ll take three. I’ll give some to my mother too. I’ll be sure to tell her it’s from you.” Ella grinned.
Rennie neatly printed Ella’s and Cope’s names before getting down to the business of some good school gossip. Ella was not only charmed by Rennie but by the way Cope was with her. So gentle and silly. It was funny how all the men she saw on a regular basis were scary on the outside, big and braw, but gentle, truly kind and careful with the people they loved. It was disarming, Andrew Copeland’s sweetness made her gooey and witless in a most delicious way.
“Do you need a ride home?” Cope asked her later as they left the café, full of cake and coffee.
Her smile was pretty much the same one she’d had on her face all afternoon. “No, but thanks. I’ve got my car here. I had to run some stuff by my parents’ house for Mick. My mother is doing a big care package for him. And you don’t care.” She laughed.
“If it concerns you, I care.”
They paused at her car once she’d unlocked the door. “He’s in Central America, out in a lot of really far-flung and rural places, so he’ll be thrilled to get magazines, his favorite cookies, that sort of thing.” She snorted. “Do you need a ride?”
“I’m tempted to lie just to get some more time with you, but no, I’m just up the block too.” He slid a knuckle up her throat. “I’ll see you in a few hours then.”
She nodded and fell into the soft kiss he gave her before stepping back to let her into the car.
“Bye.”
Holy smokes. Ella licked her lips as she drove away, not allowing herself a look into the mirror to see him again. She’d get into an accident if she caught sight of those legs, those thick, hard thighs, that butt, oh that butt.
She sighed happily and settled into the seat. She had a date. With Andrew Copeland.
It was that happy thought that guided her to Café Diva to grab some beans. She was dangerously close to being out of coffee. In the old days, as in until that moment, she’d have grabbed some from the back of the café and buy them wholesale.
Erin used to get pissy when she tried to
pay, but she’d understood the whys of it and respected Ella’s need to do things that kept her independent and in control of her life.
But it wasn’t the old days. And today would be the day she bought her coffee from the same place the café did. Like an adult. She might have told Cope about it, had thought of it, but maybe she just wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet and own how lame it was.
So she parked her car, only a lucky four blocks down. The area was thick with businesses, and parking was at a premium. Having lived in Seattle her entire life, she thanked her parallel parking skills after only two tries.
The sidewalks were crowded with people out for the afternoon. Cafés were full as the shoppers went from the metaphysical bookstore to one of the last indie record stores in town. Fabric from the clothing shops brightened a day mostly made gray by the lack of leaves and the cloud cover.
Diva loomed just ahead, fairy lights strung in the window. The scent of freshly made donuts reminded her to grab some of the spice ones her father liked so much. She smiled, thinking of how pleased he’d be when she dropped them off when she delivered the other stuff for Mick.
At the crosswalk, traffic had bottled up, jostling everyone waiting. Someone bumped into her. She lost her footing on the slick sidewalk, and a hand caught her upper arm, hauling her upright.
Panic began to boil up, and she began to argue with herself furiously to calm down and handle it. There was talking. To her as they asked her things. She managed to respond as she nearly gagged on the fear and then the shame.
She got across the street, sweating despite the cold. Pushing it back, pushing it back even as her muscles jumped and her head hurt.
Each step got her closer to the doors. Luckily for her, the woman behind the counter recognized Ella and waved, beckoning her deeper into the dimly lit coffeehouse. Normally, Ella loved the feeling of the place. Big comfortable chairs and couches littered the room. The newsstand just out front provided plenty of material to while away a few hours drinking coffee and munching on their ridiculously good donut holes.
Right then it felt claustrophobic and overstuffed.
She managed to get a bag of coffee and to get back to her car. Once the door closed and locked behind her, she gave in and let the tears come.
9
Ella stood in front of the mirror. For a time she’d debated even going out that night, but in the end, it had felt like she’d have given up if she had canceled. Besides, why not look on this night with her friends as some sort of treat or bonus after that fucked-up foray to get coffee.
She took a sip of the strong brew, softened with lots of milk and sugar. Before she got into the shower she’d put on a pot to brew, and when she’d gotten out, Elise had put it on the bathroom counter to wait for her. Each drink was a little victory lap in her head. She owed part of that success to Andrew and the classes he’d given her. He’d planted the seed within her, the confidence in her inner and physical strength.
Elise had come over early to help her turn her normally flat-ironed, smooth, chin-length bob into a tousled mass of big curls. She was Ella still, but with sparkles, and who didn’t like sparkles?
“You look so pretty.” Elise stood just behind her in the doorway.
Ella looked back at her eyes and the job her friend had done. Some brushes and what seemed like two dozen little pots of color, and suddenly Ella’s eyes were mysterious and sexy. Combined with the hair, she didn’t feel so very bad in comparison to the other women she’d seen Cope with in the past.
She took a last measuring look and realized something. “I don’t look startled.”
“Startled?”
She hadn’t told anyone of her experiences some hours before. “Sometimes it feels like that’s my go-to expression. Startled. Frightened. Like a high-strung teacup-sized dog.”
Elise leaned against the doorjamb. “Hmm. I’ve never thought of it that way.”
Ella of the mysterious eyes looked at her friend’s reflection in the mirror. “What do you think of it as?”
“Well first of all, you’re long and lean with a big rack. That’s not in a teacup dog neighborhood, dumb ass. And then, I have to say, startled is never a word I associate with you. You’re eminently capable of most any task. Keeps my life in perspective, that’s for sure. I envy your focus.”
Ella turned, raising her brows in surprise. “My focus?”
“You know, El, you’re so much more than the time you were with Bill and the attack. You took something shitty and you made a new future. Most people don’t do that. They hang on forever. It’s easy to stay in that pit of despair. Or let it be your excuse for not moving on.”
She understood the tendency. “So my focus is bad?”
Elise laughed. “No, goofy! What I mean is you’re good at things. You handle things. You make up your mind to do something, and you will stop at nothing until it’s done. That’s focus. You let yourself forget that. The thing with Bill was fleeting. You were Ella before, and you’re Ella now. You are tenacious. Your eyes, your facial expression more often than not is determined, focused. Startled is what happens to deer when you surprise them. You are a lot of things, but that’s not one of them.”
Elise tossed a scarf her way, and Ella tried it with the slim, deep blue scoop-necked sweater she wore.
When the fear and shame choked her enough to gag just from being jostled by some random person on a street in full daylight, it seemed to her the thing with Bill was more than simply fleeting.
It had claimed parts of her psyche, and she hated that. That’s why she wrapped the scarf just so and put on pretty earrings. She would not cede to him one more inch of herself than he’d stolen. “I’ve been one thing for so long I sometimes forget I wasn’t always that person.”
When she was growing up, she was good at everything. She was on the honor roll all through school. She was a cheerleader, on the debate team. In the winters the Tipton clan went sledding and skiing, though ice camping was still the kookiest idea she’d ever heard. She’d been vivacious and outgoing. There’d been boys including her high school sweetheart, the sweet boy who’d fumbled around with her in his parents’ basement on the fold-out couch.
Sometimes that past was hard to bear. Hard to bear because in the middle of the night when she was alone and couldn’t sleep, she drowned in the memories of who she was and then of the fall she’d taken into who she’d been with Bill.
Elise nodded, listening.
“I hate that person. She’s weak and a victim.”
“And you have no idea how she could have ended up in that place where she made choices she never imagined she’d make. Enduring things she knew were bad.” Elise understood that.
“Yeah.”
“Let me say this. You’re making the right steps in the right order. You got your life together first. You got yourself in shape physically, you took care of school and now have a way to not only support yourself in the future, but you’re helping people who also made dumb choices and ended up hurt. And now you can have the room to explore being a woman again, in the romantic sense.”
She pulled her boots on as she thought about it. “Yeah, I think so. But Elise, Cope is so, gah, he’s just like, a jump to expert level. Maybe I should date with training wheels men first. When he kisses me, oh my god, it’s like all my body lights up. I’ve never been so hormonal! He touches me, slides his thumb over my knuckles, and it makes me quivery.”
Elise smiled knowingly. “That’s the best, isn’t it? He’s been hungry for you for a very long time. But, wow, the way he is right now? It’s intense. He wants you in a way he’s never wanted a woman before. At least not in the time I’ve known him. He wears what he feels about you on his skin. Aside from being sexy, it’s beautiful to see.”
“Do you think? Oh never mind! It doesn’t matter. Here’s what I think. I like Andrew Copeland a lot. I’ve known him for years. I trust him. I also know I’ve never felt so fluttery and discombobulated over a man, and I’m digging it. I�
�ve decided to let myself be happy about being giddy. I’ve decided to let myself go with it, wherever it goes, without second-guessing.”
“I’m on your team for all that.” Elise grabbed her coat. “Brody made me promise to leave before Cope got here. I’m going to run back home. I’ll meet you at the pub.”
Ella laughed. “He did?”
“He did. I’m guessing there was some guy meeting or something. Erin and I have been taunting them that five beefy dudes have to unite to stand against us three. Pfft. I think they just want to give you both some space. They’re already sure of Cope’s intentions toward you. Brody said he couldn’t think of a better man for you.”
“Aww! So sweet, these boys. All right. He’s supposed to be here in fifteen minutes, so go on home. I’ll see you all in a bit.”
Elise hugged her. “I’m so excited for you! I felt like such a rock star each time Brody looked at me when we were falling in love. I still do. Cope looks at you that way. It makes me giddy just watching you two.”
“Stop planning our wedding already!” She gave her friend a playful swat. “It’s our first date. Let’s not rush this. I’m having this lovely time with a man I’ve crushed on for years. I know he’s a nice guy, but he comes in bad boy wrapping paper. This is all a lot of wonderful stuff. Enough wonderful without all the forever I see in your eyes.”
Elise, still laughing, left with promises to see her again shortly.
Cope stood on her doorstep and took a deep breath. Damn, it felt good to finally be in this place. Years he’d wanted her. At first he told himself it was stupid and to ignore it. Then he knew she wasn’t ready, but he never let go of his attraction to her. And then she began to blossom and open herself up to more. And led him to be standing on her doorstep ready to take her on their first official date.
He wasn’t outwardly spiritual or woo woo in any way, but he did believe, quite strongly, in fate. He knew he was right where he was supposed to be. Taking the first step in what he hoped would be many into a relationship with Ella.
